Krzysztof Zieliński

BORN 1974, Wąbrzeźno

What makes Krzysztof Zieliński’s photographs special is their painterly composition. The artist openly admits to being inspired by the American landscape photography of the 1970s – slightly surreal, fond of long shots. He applies this artistic strategy almost exclusively to one subject – the city he lives in. He has been photographing his home town of Wąbrzeźno as well as Berlin where he is currently based. His pictures are documents of the process of getting to know, experiencing, and then rediscovering specific places. Zieliński has a degree in photography from the FAMU in Prague (2001). In 1998, he did a semester course at the Fine Arts Department, Middlesex University, London.

Millenium School #30

The series Millennium Schoolconsists of 44 photographs taken at a primary school 3 in the artist’s home town of Wąbrzeźno. The school was built in 1962 as one of the 1,400 schools erected in Poland as part of a government plan of “1,000 schools for the 1,000th anniversary of the Polish state.” At the time, the buildings were of modern quality, with large gyms, comfortable classrooms, and state-of-the-art equipment. Today, they have lost their appeal, become rather drab, and the poor quality of the materials used in their construction is beginning to show. Almost nothing has changed over the last 20 years. Only the classrooms have been painted in bright colours – such as the deep green in the photograph – as if to cover up the passing of time and hide the modest equipment.

Millenium School #35

The Millennium School series was shot in the summer, during the school break. For the artist, it was a reminiscence of his childhood days. “While visiting the classrooms, I was wandering around my own memory. Images from the past returned as intensely as the taste of the Proustian Madeleine, but I was rediscovering the familiar flavour.” The artist remembered some things from the old days, but some, he found completely new to him. Thus, visiting his old school, he was visiting a place suspended in time, a place where the past meets the present.